>The US is fifty different markets, every state has its own laws

In worst case scenario, corporations will take the most restrictive law (aka California) and apply it throughout. The same doesn't happen in the EU. There are language requirements for packaging/instructions for instance. And things that might be approved for use in one country but not the next, you rarely find that between states.

Again on the language. If you create a digital product for the US, you have to do one site. If you create one for the EU, you have to create at least 2, one for your local market and one in english. It's not just "laws and restrictions", and in some cases the lack of "laws and restrictions" made certain products obsolete (Malaise era american cars for instance) as other markets had to innovate to comply with more demanding regulation.

>Exactly. And the important thing is learning why and how this happens. Venezuela is another outlier in economics. Look at the laws, regulations, political and economic systems each country has and you'll know why they have different levels of development.

The classic speedrun to mention Venezuela on reddit. We all know why Switzerland is rich. Centuries of "neutrality" cementing it as the bank of Europe. Then that capital being invested in high value added/luxury industries like pharmaceuticals, chocolate, watches. You can't expect to do the same thing on a country with 10x the population and arrive at the same GDP/capita, the amount of people/companies looking for what Swiss banks offer will not magically scale 10x so Germany can achieve the same numbers. And if every country focuses on making the same high value product, at some point it stops being high value.